Tiger, Tiger

A Memoir

“With Tiger, Tiger, Fragoso has created from the ashes of her childhood a stunning, brave, personal book.” —Edmonton Journal

Chosen as a Globe 100 Best Book of the year in 2011!

Chosen as the Best Memoir of 2011 by Library Journal!

Chosen as a Best Book (non-fiction) for 2011 by Publishers Weekly!

“With Tiger, Tiger, Fragoso has created from the ashes of her childhood a stunning, brave, personal book.” —Edmonton Journal

“It is at once beautiful and appalling, a true-life Lolita written in the high rhapsodic cadence of a Humbert Humbert, recollected in tranquility by the victim herself.” —New York Magazine Review of Books

“Brave, dark, and horrifying; Fragoso manages to elicit dignity and humanity from the most depraved souls to tell an unforgettable survivor’s story. Get it. Read it.” —Library Journal

“A remarkable debut . . . the many ways in which abuse can echo down through families is captured in this memoir with a clear-eyed and hard-won empathy.” —Globe and Mail

One summer day, Margaux Fragoso swam up to Peter Curran at a public swimming pool and asked him to play. She was seven; he was fifty-one. When Curran invited her and her mom to see his house, the little girl found a child’s dream world, full of odd pets and books and music and magical toys. Margaux’s mother was devoted, but, beset by mental illness and frightened of her abusive husband, she was only too ready to take advantage of an escape for the daughter she felt incapable of taking care of on her own. Soon Margaux was spending all her time with Peter.

In time, he insidiously took on the role of Margaux’s playmate, father, lover, and captor. Charming and repulsive, warm and violent, loving and manipulative, Peter burrowed into every aspect of Margaux’s life and transformed her from a girl fizzing with imagination and affection into a deadened, young-old woman on the brink of suicide. But when she was twenty-two, it was Peter—ill, and terrified at the thought of losing her—who killed himself, at the age of sixty-six.

With lyricism and mesmerizing clarity, Margaux Fragoso has unflinchingly explored the darkest episodes of her life, helping us see how pedophiles work hidden away in the open to steal childhood. In writing Tiger, Tiger, she has healed herself of a wound that was fourteen years in the making. This extraordinary memoir is an unprecedented glimpse into the heart and mind of a monster; but more than this, it illustrates the power of memory and truth-telling to mend.